Share this:

The late J. Howard Marshall II with Anna Nicole Smith, who was 63 years his junior;

Hot days and nights? Harvey Weinstein and his wife Georgina Chapman. (ANG/FAME PICTURES)

‘I’m sick of being accused of gold digging. It just so happens I get turned on by liver spots.” That’s how Anna Nicole Smith famously defended her sexual chemistry with her oil baron husband, J. Howard Marshall II. When they married, she was a voluptuous 26-year-old model. He was an 89-year-old billionaire, only months from his deathbed.Whether Smith truly felt sparks — or only her husband’s wallet — remains a mystery. But there’s no doubting that trophy-wife life has its perks, particularly in New York City: $400 haircuts, private jets to St. Barts, diamonds the size of Shih Tzus, black AmEx cards. (Spending limit? What spending limit?)

Yet the high life comes with a high price for many trophy wives. It’s payable in passionate nights with a pudgy, crinkle-necked, saggy-reared old dude. Who has access to Viagra. Until death, or prenup, do you part.

Trophy wives and their unique concerns are covered on “Millionaire Matchmaker,” which airs tonight on Bravo. This season, set in NYC, raises these questions for wannabe wives of the rich — but not so good-looking.

“I always say on my application: Which do you like, looks or money?” asks Patti Stanger, the show’s host. “You can’t have both.”

A quick glance at charity-circuit snapshots supports Stanger’s case. And Janis Spindel, a professional matchmaker based in Manhattan, says she’s witnessed the phenomenon for years. A few years ago she introduced a 5-foot-4, top-earning attorney with a receding hairline to the “very cute, petite” blond young lady who became his wife. “Men fall in love through their eyes,” Spindel explains. “If the guy’s smart, funny and has a great personality — women are fine.”

What about a guy’s wealth? Does that help the balding, height-challenged medicine go down? “Absolutely,” she replies.

But how exactly do gorgeous babes face “intimate moments” with husbands blessed with plenty of disposable income but not with good looks? The Post asked real-life prize wives and experts for their tips on between-the-sheets bonding.

Six years ago, Sara* lived with her parents in Brooklyn and worked as a secretary. When she met her future husband at a party, he owned a Ducati, slept in a posh Fifth Avenue apartment and paid his maid more than Sara earned.

Sara, now 27, abruptly upgraded from Nine West to Louboutin. Although her husband is nearly a decade her senior, Sara insists he’s still quite handsome and put-together. “Men look great in a suit,” she says. “It doesn’t matter what kind of rolls they have underneath it.” She has no regrets about marrying her “trophy husband” (as she calls him).

Indeed, trophy wives must find something about their wealthy husbands that makes them weak in the knees, contends Janice Lieberman, author of “How to Shop for a Husband.”

“Whether he’s older or not as hot as you hoped for in your wildest dreams, get over it and grow up,” she advises. “The electricity is in high voltage when somebody’s good to you and your family — there’s something sexy about that.”

An even more effective aphrodisiac for trophy wives?

Shutting those peepers.

“If you close your eyes in bed and the guy has a soft touch, you kind of forget about what he looks like,” suggests “Smart Girls Marry Money” co-author Elizabeth Ford.

Matchmaker Stanger recalls her own relationship years ago with a highly successful attorney, who took her to the Super Bowl for their first date. She describes him delicately: “He was a troll — face like Dom DeLuise, body like an ugly Mandy Patinkin.”

Still, she says, he gave her “the best sex I ever had.”

In fact, the biggest turn-on for many neophyte newlyweds isn’t the size of his waist, but the size of his office. “Power is very sexy,” says Kristin Billerbeck, author of the “Trophy Wives” chick-lit series. “Trophy wives fall in love with the lifestyle, as well as the men they marry.”

Jill, a 23-year-old Paris Hilton look-alike, agrees that her jet-setting 45-year-old husband’s “power is cool.” “But when we’re together, business isn’t really on his mind,” she says. “And I’m a cosmetologist; I don’t think I’d even understand if he tried to explain all his work.”

The couple met two years ago on the dating site SugarDaddyForMe. They now split time between an UWS apartment next to Central Park and a home in Beverly Hills. According to Jill, her husband works for a security firm, works out religiously and resembles Jack Nicholson.

“The sex is not just sex, it’s been just amazing,” she raves.

No, ahem, issues with the 20-year-plus age gap? “Love has no age,” she coos earnestly. “I like to think if I gain 50 pounds and dye my hair black, he’d still love me.”

Donna Spangler, a former Playboy model, has spent the last 13 years in a “fairy tale” relationship with a wealthy dental surgeon 24 years her senior. “He looks a lot like Milton Berle,” she says, adding he’s “very hip, not some feeble old guy.”

She encourages trophy wives to be generous sexual partners, but not to be afraid to demand what they want in bed. “In order to be a princess, you have to act like one,” says Spangler, who penned “How to Get a Rich Man.” Meanwhile, Ford warns that with the availability of Viagra, young women must be cautious when picking a potential sugar daddy. “Men can now have sex forever,” she says.